Film Club: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
About this Live Online Event
It’s hard to overstate the seismic impact of The Blair Witch Project. Released in 1999, this oft-imitated classic popularized the found footage genre, revolutionized independent film marketing, and taught a generation of filmmakers that successful horror films could be made on the smallest of budgets. Its journey began with a midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival and ended with the film earning nearly one-quarter of a billion dollars at the box office.
The Film Club event series will devote its spooky-season October session to The Blair Witch Project. A monthly, community-driven deep dive into the soul of the Sundance Film Festival, Film Club highlights one film each month from the recently-published Sundance Film Festival 101 Watchlist.
In this free, online event, Film Club host Kiva Reardon will dissect the formal inventiveness and lasting legacy of The Blair Witch Project. How did this ultra-low-budget first feature from two then-unknown directors (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez) become one of the most influential films of the last 30 years? Reardon will offer a close analysis of what makes Blair Witch work as a standalone fright film and what has made it the enduring cultural phenomenon it remains today.
Reardon’s presentation will include clips, slides, and a Q&A during which attendees can ask questions about this Halloween-time staple. This event will conclude with participants entering breakout rooms to discuss the film in small groups.
Join our next monthly Film Club series featuring Kiva Reardon.
Claim your free spot now.
Visit JustWatch to learn where you can stream or rent the film in your region.
If you would benefit from an accommodation to fully participate in this event, please complete this form, contact us at (435) 776-7790, or email us at accessibility@sundance.org to discuss your specific requests. Every effort will be made to accommodate advance requests; however, requests made within 5 days of the event may not be guaranteed.
A recording of this session will be posted to Film Club within two business days of the live event. Everyone who registers for this session will receive an email with a link to view the recording when it is posted!
Live Online EventHost
Kiva Reardon
Kiva Reardon is a producer, writer, and programmer working across fiction and non-fiction. Previously, she held the positions of: Vice President of Film at Barry Jenkins’s production company PASTEL; Associate Director of Film Programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; and Lead Programmer of Contemporary World Cinema at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
She founded cléo journal, a publication dedicated to film and feminism, which ran from 2013 to 2019. Under Kiva’s leadership, cléo became an internationally-respected outlet that helped launch a new generation of film writers. IndieWire called cléo an "essential source for smart, fresh, and feminist perspectives on film and media." Its print compendium was published in 2020.
Her writing has appeared in Filmmaker, Sight & Sound, MUBI Notebook, Cineaste, and many others. She writes a newsletter on movies and motherhood, Care Takes. She has acted as an advisor at screenwriting labs and served on festival juries at Locarno, Jeonju, Palm Springs, Aspen, and more. She has spoken at film and art institutions around the world. She is on the founding Advisory Board of the Los Angeles Festival of Movies.